


Strings: Prologue

by ausername



Series: Strings [1]
Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: I may edit it as I go, Not Beta Read, Other, spoilers most probably though this will go way off the canon rails at times, this will start a series if I finish it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26591212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ausername/pseuds/ausername
Summary: A fanfic based on a weird cool dream I had last night! Who else would go for some hardcore escapism from 2020?? But - how far would you really want to go...?
Series: Strings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1934332
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

‘Have you eaten today?’  
  
Heaving a tear-heavy sigh, you shove your tablet onto your side table and collapse onto your bed. Nothing was interesting anymore...nothing but a very specific, kind of cumulatively expensive video game that came highly recommended by an internet friend. Mystic Messenger. The RFA’s sweet, caring questions have been the only thing keeping you heating up the cheapest microwave meals you can find on your cautious forays out of your apartment, and forcing them down. You’re pretty sure your friend knew this would be Mystic Messenger’s effect.  
  
“No, Yoosung,” your sad reply is muffled into your sheets. “No...I’m low on everything. ...I lost my job. This year, 2020, has been a _mess._ I really don’t want to get into it… not that...you can hear me, anyway…” Sighing again, you shove at your comforter in your efforts to get up from the, mm, so cozy sleeping platform… you have to eat something from your rationed supplies today, you gotta-  
  
…  
  
You wake to an email notification from your tablet. Groggily, you flop over the bed and towards it, in order to check up on an ad offer you’d seen a few days ago. The advertisement was for $50 an hour to test out a new VR game...virtual reality kit provided for the test. It could be perfect. It would save you from being kicked out for lack of rent.  
  
‘Your application has been accepted.’ Wonderful! You do a little dance as soon as you read the first line, only to be interrupted out of it by the growling of your stomach. Right...you... _really_ didn’t eat much yesterday. Rising to eat, you almost miss the last line of the email: ‘supplies delivered immediately.’ Immediately…? How soon is…? You’re halfway across your room when your email dings again. Huh? You check. Apparently there’s...a package delivered to you. You eat at record speeds and rush to check your door, properly excited for the first time in months. You’d looked up virtual reality equipment, just enough to know what the gear would be like. That wasn’t quite what had you so excited. The makers of this game claimed to be partnered with the makers of Mystic Messenger, Cheritz.  
  
“Maybe it’ll be a sequel…?” You mumble to yourself, hefting the surprisingly heavy box back through your small kitchen and towards your room. “Nah, what are the odds.” You giggle, anyway, at the prospect of seeing your favs in Virtual Reality. When you open the box, you are surprised. There was the headset, the handheld parts, but also… a strange square apparatus, without any cords or ports to connect to or power it. You hadn’t seen something like that when looking up VR equipment. Maybe it’s in here by accident? Shrugging, you set up the recognizable gear, and put it on.  
  
‘Welcome to tutorial mode.’ Text scrolls across a muted color void in your vision, and you nod to no one, signaling from the device in your dominant hand for the next line. ‘Settings will be configured automatically.’ Huh? Alright, ‘In this demo you will play as the character Maeko Choi, as she struggles to keep her friends from degrees of tragic fate.’ You nod again, signal to continue.  
  
‘Thank you.’  
  
“For what?” you ask aloud, automatically. But when you press the forward button, there is no elaboration. Instead-  
  
‘To configure settings, please lay down while wearing the VR equipment, with the Shift Cube included somewhere nearby.’ You pause. The Shift Cube must be referring to the earlier apparatus, but. That’s a bit odd. But maybe this is really innovative stuff? It’s not like you’ve actually played VR, before. Maybe your research needed to go further. With a shrug, you barely manage to lift it again, and lay down on your bed left of the cube. Curious, you free a hand to momentarily set it on the cube - and notice, it’s hot! Drawing your hand away quickly at the burn, a flash of heat and light comes from your right, and-  
  
Your body feels...different. Eyes still closed, heat gone, hand no longer hurting, you notice the balance of your everything feels...off. Just, off. Your hands are curled inward - with a jolt, you realize...your fingernails...weren’t that long, were they?  
  
“MC?” The oddly familiar, heavily Korean accented voice comes from your right. The tone is...hopeful, dreading, strangely sad. You open your eyes- and gasp. A certainly familiar- though more realistic looking- red headed face fills your field of vision.  
  
“Wow, these graphics are _incredible!_ ” You screech. The sound echoes around the room of computers and odd machines, and Saeyoung’s face falls, except for a quivering smile on his lips. “...Seven, are you...okay?” What a weird question, this is VR… but…  
  
“Hey,” he says, quietly. His voice is slightly different from the voice you’d heard from Mystic Messenger. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Huh?” You remember the tutorial. “Maeko, Maeko Choi.” Seiyoung shakes his head, and you tilt yours, confused. Saeyoung turns around, picks something up, and returns to you, handing you a small mirror. You look into it and freeze.  
  
“I look _just like_ MC from Mystic Messenger…”  
  
“Is that what we called it?” Saeyoung’s voice sounds oddly empty. Worried by his tone, you dig your fingers into your palm, and-  
  
“Ouch!” looking down, you see a trickle of blood from your hand. “Is... this…” you ask slowly, “ _virtual_ reality...?” Saeyoung sighs.  
  
“No.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Oh…” You say. Saeyoung stares back at you, just as blank looking as you feel. “Oh, I’m dreaming. Hey, this is kinda cool.” Saeyoung reaches down and pinches your cheeks. “Ow! …” Okay, not a dream. “Did I- the light- _am I dead??_ ”  
  
“No.” You slump in relief, and long brown hair covers your face. You quickly shake it out of your vision. “Look at this.” He points to a screen, and you blink. Your own face looks back at you, with an expression both triumphant and sad. The self you watch waves, and give a thumbs up with a wink. Only...that’s not you. As _you_ are you.  
  
“What is going on?” Even as you ask, you watch as your not-doppelganger turns on your bed. You watch your hands tentatively reach for the cube, which had singed a square spot on your mattress below it. There seemed to be no fire, however, and the cube must be touchable now, as the person on screen lifts it, twists the top, and drops two smaller apparati out of it onto the bed. “...What…” Lifting the smaller of the two objects, other you speaks something to it, and likely by voice command it opens into a small antenna. Placing it carefully near the second object and inserting it into a slot, your screen self slumps in relief.  
  
“Did you know,” Saeyoung speaks, “that time and space are connected?” When you don’t reply, he continues speaking, even as his eyes remain glued to the single screen. “To work with time, you need to work with space. To work with both, you need to work with...realities. Plural.”  
  
“What is going on??”  
  
“Maeko and I needed a time machine. And we built it, in one string of reality. This one.” Finally turning your way, Saeyoung smiles wryly. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t do it alone. And we couldn’t do it without someone to monitor the machine from both sides. So...sorry.” Your stomach sinks.  
  
“Sorry for what?”  
  
“We kinda had to bodyswap you and Maeko.”  
  
“Ah…” Wait. “ _How_ does that even work??” Yup, you’re dreaming. It’s just...very, very realistic.  
  
“Do you actually want the explanation?” Saeyoung’s tone is tired, but amused.  
  
“I actually want to wake up,” you counter him, “This is creepy.” 

“Sorry,” he says again, shrugging his shoulders. “Really, I am.” You shake your head, disbelieving your situation.  
  
“When can I switch back?” Saeyoung’s silence raises the fine hair on the back of your neck. “Um…”  
  
“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I’m...we’re...really, really sorry.”  
  
“...No way.” You collapse back on the singular bed in the middle of the room full of tech, spread out Maeko’s arms and stare up at the ceiling. For a moment, you could swear nothing goes through your mind at all. Then you hear a quiet, brokenhearted sigh. You swing up to a sitting position to see Saeyoung with his hand to the screen your body is on, to see Maeko holding your hand back towards his. “...Seiyoung…” he lets his hand slide down the screen and back to his side.  
  
“I’ll be leaving soon,” he says, abruptly. “I’ll keep up this end of the device, from space. ...The signal will last across realities as long as we live to maintain it.”  
  
“...You’re leaving?” You feel what little security you have left plunge out a warp hole located roughly where your stomach should be. Wait… “You’ll be...in space?” _‘Doesn’t anyone care about the Seven in space??’_ “...That wasn’t a throwaway line, or a metaphor?” … “You’ll be alone…” Seven’s huff of breath borders on a hysterical micro-laugh.  
  
“Don’t worry. I’ll stick it out ‘till the end.”  
  
“Saey-”  
  
“Anyway, you’ve got your own story to worry about!” You gulp. That’s true.  
  
“What’s gonna happen to me?” Seven turns to you with a painfully forced smile.  
  
“Basically what was advertised!”  
  
“...Huh?”  
  
“You get to beta test our technology. You could easily live the stuff of dreams... or nightmares. That being said; do try to have fun!”  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
“What’s your name?” Dazed, you tell him. He smiles at you as genuinely as he can under the circumstances. It looks surprisingly sincere.  
  
“Well, ______, you’re going to traverse spacetime. Is there anywhere in particular you’d like to go?”  
  
“Ho-”  
  
“Except home, sorry.” You close your eyes, and try to think. The odd questionnaire you filled out to test the ‘VR equipment’ comes back to mind.  
  
“...You specifically sought out someone who loves the RFA.”  
  
“And my brother. And Rika.” You nod. It makes sense.  
  
“Something tells me you’re waiting for me to choose a predetermined fate.”  
  
“Nah. Just a predetermined slice of spacetime. Within it...you can do what you will. But.”  
  
“But?”  
  
“Step out of line...hurt them… and we’ll have to step in.” Seven’s voice drops to something you’ve never before heard from him, and hope to never hear again. Shivers go up and down your spine in tandem. Not the pleasant kind.  
  
“Seven,” you say crisply, “where are you sending me?”  
  
“Whenever you want to go,” he murmurs. “Choose your ‘character’.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Choose…?”  
  
“Someone from ‘Mystic Messenger,’ choose your favorite, maybe. To test out the time machine, you can go and meet them at any pivotal point in their lives.”   
  
“...Whoa.”   
  
“Feel the power?” As Saeyoung jokes, you lay down again, hands over your face.   
  
“This is all...sudden,” you try to explain, and Saeyoung makes a clicking noise behind his teeth.   
  
“Please choose quickly…” he wheedles, “you may have nothing but time, but mine is running out.”   
  
“Excuse me?”   
  
“My spaceship takes off in fifteen minutes, with or without me in it.”   
  
“Oh.”   
  
“Just say whoever’s name first comes to mind.”

  
  
Yoosung   
  
Hyun   
  
Jaehee   
  
Jumin   
  
Saeyoung   
  
Saeran   
  
Jihyun   
  
RIka 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each underlined name will eventually be a link or be next to a link, to a work in this series.  
> I'll be taking requests to fill in plotholes and narrow down possibilities, as this fanfic could potentially be *very long,* and each 'route' will have multiple endings if I finish it as I plan.  
> So, reader, you can alter everyone's fate! Who do you want to meet most? When? What do you want to do with/for them? Give me writing fuel? Please?


End file.
